SOURCE: Weber, Joseph G. “The Personae in the Style of La Rochefoucauld's Maximes.” PMLA 89, no. 1 (January 1974): 250-55.

In the following essay, Weber studies La Rochefoucauld's personification of human traits in the Maximes.

Moralist literature of seventeenth-century France can be characterized by what might be called a human dialectic. The dynamics of this dialectic derive from the image of person. The author is in dialogue with himself or with an aspect of his personality, or there is a dialogue between the moi and autrui, or between moral principles. One readily thinks of Montaigne and the moi universel, Pascal and his interlocutor, de Retz and the moi politique. In the work of each of the moralistes there is a heightened sense of the dramatic interplay, not only between stylistic figures of person but between the ideas represented. Ideas take flesh in a literal and nonsymbolic way, to such an extent...